A COUNTRY WITHOUT PRAISE

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Poverty
is not defined by the color
of one’s skin;
it reveals itself
in the abuse born of
a perverse inspiration
that mocks,
insults,
offends:
a will that leaves hanging
in oblivion
the dignity of “human figures.”
No longer human,
but shadows, silhouettes
in the eyes of a respectable society…
Squalid appearances
living
a misery with a repulsive smell.
Its stench is not noble;
its bearing
has no title,
is not genteel,
neither elegant nor distinguished:
a wretched demeanor
that marks the distance from the “caste”:
the ordinary they themselves “created,”
a “stench” that does nothing but bother them.
Poverty:
have you ever seen it…
the face of misery?
The face of need?
The presence of deprivation?
Desperate sights
that will weigh upon our conscience!
No one is exempt from this wrongdoing:
we are all guilty!
Because
we pretend to support them.
What meaning does charity have
if we are indifferent
to compassion,
to generosity,
to tolerance?
Even “the desperate one”
feels dignity in his silence:
he lives not very far from you,
he may pass right by you
and you may not even notice him!
Or even worse, titled respectability
knows very well how to pretend.
Their falsehood,
their duplicity—
all just to put themselves on display.
Their brazen faces repulse me;
their immorality troubles me.
Aspects of a truth
that inexorably takes its bitter course:
a path pierced by every kind of cruelty,
the scene of their life without mercy.
From there comes the sense of abandonment,
part of an anguish
that can no longer find itself.

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Poverty has forgotten their very being:
they no longer know how to make sense of their sentence;
they do not understand the nightmare of their misfortune.
A “mea culpa”… but whose?
They refuse to speak of their ill fortune:
in their hearts remains
the deep shame of injustice
that has brought pain
to skin already bruised
by suffering and anguish.
They
are certain of it:
they do not deserve this fate!
Now
they find themselves feeding
from the garbage of a fallen “noble” thought.
Shame weighs upon the responsibility
of those who have contemplated all this.

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Cunning,
deceit,
wayward recklessness
have generated
humiliations
of a country without praise.
Author’s Note
This poem comes from a simple thought, but uncomfortable in its reasons: poverty does not take dignity away and does not make it invisible to human eyes. Too often, it is our unusual way of looking at another person that can hurt them unintentionally.
In the everyday silence there are lives that pass by and we look at them with indifference, or we simply continue on our way as if it did not concern us. When suffering becomes something ordinary to our eyes, unfortunately even indifference begins to seem normal.
Those who suffer do not lose their dignity because we are unable to see it. The strange thing is that suffering does not scream and does not force us to take a stand: we sit comfortably in our armchairs and do nothing that changes anything.
Reading my note again, I try to understand if words can feel compassion. I can swear that closing our eyes does not give dignity back to those who suffer and does not protect ours by closing the door of our home. We remain sitting there, maybe watching TV, while someone, not far from us, continues to live what we have preferred not to see.
— Antonio Castellaneta

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